The Lesson Trump Foreign Policy may teach the World? They don’t need us

               The New York Times had two articles on January 25, 2017 about the targets of Donald Trump’s most regular ire, China and Mexico. Fittingly they appear on the same page of the Washington print edition. It appears China wants to avoid economic uncertainty heading in to the domestic political turbulence associated with the selection of a new Standing Committee. Mexico, on the other hand is willing to take the poison pill on NAFTA and end any assistance they provide to the United States regarding emigration and security.

                Mr. Trump will likely see these as the rumblings before they capitulate and “make great deals” with us. They very well may not be. The untold story of the T.P.P. was that it was extending the US power in Southeast Asia. It was brokered by the US to prevent it being brokered by China. So long as the US was the leader of the trade negotiations, China would not attempt to breach our fragile relationship by trying to bully their way through. It was a piece of nuance that Ms. Clinton never struck back with against Mr. Sanders in their primary. When the poll numbers came in Ms. Clinton followed her populist opponent in the primary, and then tried to explain away her early support on other technical grounds against her populist opponent in the general election. It’s clear though, that Mr. Sanders or Ms. Clinton would have had the good sense and tact to extend the negotiation in an effort to maintain the dynamic that existed. Ms. Clinton, actually, was promising to negotiate it until it was good for American workers; Mr. Sanders is receiving the benefit of the doubt.

                Instead an executive order has come down that has severed any possibility that T.P.P. will ever happen, or that the US will ever be a part of it. So now the region has been left to China, whose growing influence will no doubt be curbed by something else? At least our president may still believe that. Or he may just go to war over the South China Sea.

                Mexico is our partner, except in Mr. Trump’s Rhetoric. He wants us to show them what’s what and build that wall. Well now they may not play ball with us any more, taking preemptive action against modifications to NAFTA as well as suspending any enforcement efforts they have in emigration. For the soccer fans out there “dos a cero.” Mexico would like to remind us that they are one of our biggest markets as much as we are one of theirs. They are ready to take back the initiative in the relationship.

                The question we must now ask ourselves as we turn inwards is, when we look out again will the world have forgotten how much they need us? Germany is trying to keep Europe outward facing, should they succeed against the isolationists they represent power to our east.  China may well go forward with the T.P.P. and lead to our West. Where will we be? It is unlikely that American exceptionalism should be so well proven that the world will wait for us. The last two times American presidents have urged us towards isolationist policies a divide Europe has helped backslide us in to a world war. The last time this happened there was also great strife (aggressive Japanese military action) in Asia.

                To know the past these days seems to be a text book unfolding before you. We can be the authors of our own demise if we so choose. A vacuum is always filled by something, we are the ones deciding to leave our seat open.